I haven't had all the time to read a book. Let alone, write (I'm having my finals in a day but I somehow couldn't suppress the need to get this post up). And I would suppose that would be one of the reasons why my head has been feeling so heavy. Everything has been too concrete, too realistic, for my liking. I've had my imagination boxed up and weighed down by thoughts upon thoughts. It's been making me feel a little empty, I must say - the only images on loop in my head being consequences and not dreams.
This past week has been particularly dry. Can you relate? At some point, in the midst of the highs and lows of things you look forward to and things you dread, everything starts to look a little mundane. You feel like you're just getting by day after day by counting your blessings. It's not nice to go through, it gets you a little confused. The hours pass by faster than usual and I'm not sure where they go, whether they fall under hours well spent or hours wasted.
But its at times like these when you start to pay attention to the tiniest of things. It's when you plug in your earphones with the volume turned on louder than usual (and for me that's a hazardous loud since I listen to my music with the volume almost at a maximum). Its when you let yourself surrender to how everything is, and choose to forget everything that you're thinking about to let your head feel the lightness it deserves. It's when you start realising the hidden gem in a song that you've had on your iPod for so long. You've finally given yourself the time off to scrutinise every word being sung, pulling apart the elements rather than listening to the song as a whole.
It felt amazing. It was an effortless form of contentment that I haven't given myself in a while.
I became a little more driven to organise the songs on my Spotify. Going through 'Liked from Radio' and the jumbles of songs in my playlists to pick out a few albums that I felt like I've genuinely enjoyed. Albums that I thought I should rediscover and pull apart piece by piece. I got 4 down - Justin Bieber's Purpose (LIKE REALLY THIS SHIT AMAZING), Wellness by Last Dinosaurs, Glitterbug by The Wombats and Comedown Machine by The Strokes. I shuffled them all together. It was like one big salad, with ingredients that don't exactly match but yet giving you a little tinge of flavour individually that in the end it does kind of blend. It made me really happy.
I found myself falling in love again with Slow Animals by The Strokes. Everything about the lyrics to the music managed to help me construct scenarios in my head, how I want my future to be. I imagined myself on flights and on trips to foreign places. I imagined myself watching sunsets away from home and exploring little joints and outlets by the campus of my future university.
Listening to them made me realise how little it actually took to make myself feel better. Sometimes we tend to rely too much on specific occasions and other people, when really if you give yourself the patience you need you can uncover so much with just a few seconds of clear thought. I've added about 50 songs onto my iPod in these past two weeks, most of them songs that I've just found and have never heard of before this. I became a little more attentive to the music channels I subscribed to on YouTube and noticed a song released by an artist I love that I haven't heard from in a while. And now it's a song that I'm absolutely compelled and hooked by. If you listen to Korean music (or even if you don't) and you're into really smooth jazzy voices and electronic touches then you should check out Calling for Love (feat. Beenzino) by Suran.
!!! To make matters even better, yesterday and today have been bursting with new releases. Bangtan Boys released their much anticipated mini album last night and I've been going through every song with tears in my eyes (do yourself a favour and listen to this beautiful song) and videos containing english translated lyrics in front of me. Beenzino just released a title track from his album too a couple of hours ago and I'm floating on cloud nine. !!!
Basically, it was nice being reminded again of how much the music you love can really strengthen you? Me being a person that needs bursts of things that don't add up and things that don't make sense for the moment, what I listen to has always given me the opportunity to imagine things and brighten things up a little bit. You should get some time to do that too - just be fully absorbed in your favourite tunes, let yourself cry over them or dance to them or do whatever you want, you know?
'Cause really, you can outgrow everything in the world, but you can never really let go of a great song.
